The Election Commission of India (ECI) has received several complaints against the authorities of several state-run schools in West Bengal for not excusing their teachers from regular teaching duties to perform as booth-level officers (BLOs) for the Special Intensive Revision in the state.
The BLOs, who are essentially teachers attached to various state-run schools in West Bengal, have complained that the school authorities are not respecting the commission's mandate, which states that until the SIR exercise is ongoing, the BLOs should not be hindered from fulfilling their regular assignments and instead be released for BLO duties.
These teacher-BLOs have complained that they are "forced" to attend their regular teaching assignments in the first half and then move out for BLO duties in the second half.
They said that it was not only leading to excessive work pressure but also impacting the collection process of enumeration forms distributed among voters, the digitisation of those forms, and the upload through the BLO App.
"The ECI is viewing the complaints against the school authorities quite seriously and will shortly communicate with the state government to direct them to excuse the teachers from their regular assignments to perform BLO duties," sources in the office of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), West Bengal, said.
Another complaint from the BLOs that the ECI is receiving is that excessive pressure on the server is often slowing down the process of uploading the enumeration forms, making it difficult for the BLOs to meet the commission's target of uploading a minimum of 150 forms daily.
"The commission has directed its technical team to address this issue, and the matter will be sorted out soon," the CEO's office sources said.
According to figures released from the CEO's office, till 6 p.m. on Saturday, digitisation of 3.15 crore enumeration forms has been completed.
The total number of electors in West Bengal as per the electoral roll as on October 27 is 7,66,37,529.
The commission had set a deadline for completing the process of digitisation of enumeration forms by November 30.
The entire SIR process is expected to be completed by March next year.
Earlier, the SIR was conducted in West Bengal in 2002.
(With inputs from IANS)
